All or Nothing (18 page)

The couple noticed that a trail of red dotted the floor behind the man in front of them, indicating where he’d come from. This information could be useful to them, but possibly dangerous to know. The man neared Kieran. He was staggering, as if he was drunk.

Kieran was taken aback.

The man had no eyes. It looked as if they’d been gouged from their sockets. The muscle and bone behind his eyes was visible, and streaks of blood stained his cheeks. The skin around his eyes was chaffed and blistered, as if the eyes’ removal had been done by hacking rather than slicing. The remainder of his features appeared unharmed, but the blood had spilt everywhere. Dried gore caked his face, and his hands were covered in blood-stained grime. He was waving these in front of his face, feeling his way forward.

Kieran was too shocked to react when the man reached out and grabbed his shoulder.

“Easy now, easy,” Kieran tried to reassure him. “Listen. First, you have to keep quiet. You got that?”

Kieran gripped the sightless man’s arm gently: a gesture of friendly reassurance. He didn’t want to alarm him.

The stranger nodded, relieved to have found his bearings. “Thank you, my friend, thank you. I didn’t think I would find anyone else here. I must’ve been wandering around for hours. It seems more like days!”

“That’s fine, you’re safe now, but please keep quiet. We aren’t going to leave you, okay? What’s your name?”

The man shrugged his shoulders. He moved his head, doing his best to locate his saviour by sound alone. Kieran immediately felt a rush of sympathy and respect for this blind man, and others who were similarly afflicted. He couldn’t imagine losing his own sight. This man had obviously not been born blind, he’d been deliberately blinded and, judging by the blood, the brutal surgery had been performed recently.

“Abel,” he said. “My name is Abel Jones.”

Abel gripped Kieran’s arm, and the younger man guided him to one of the boxes. He helped Abel to sit down on it. The newcomer sank down wearily. Heather moved closer to Kieran, and Abel seemed to sense her presence.

“Abel, my name is Kieran. I'm with a woman named Heather, okay? It’s just the two of us. We mean you no harm. Can you tell us how you got here?”

Abel scratched his head. Kieran noticed that Abel had wrinkles and creases in his skin. He was bald, and the greyness of his face stubble and the few wrinkles suggested that he was in his early fifties. Heather was unsure of how to react to this newcomer.

“Nice to meet you, Heather,” Abel said, holding out his hand in Kieran’s direction. Ignoring the state of Abel’s blood-covered hand, Heather reached across and shook it gently. She smiled, realising that even in the horrific situation they had found themselves in, this apparently innocent casualty was acting as if everything was normal.

“Hi, Abel, my name is Heather. Nice to meet you too.”

Abel smiled. “Such smooth skin. And what a lovely voice.”

Heather blushed slightly, as Kieran looked on.

“Abel, where did you come from?” she asked. “Do you know where you are?”

Abel thought about it for a few moments, face furrowing with concentration. Kieran stepped close and placed a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay, you can tell us.”

Abel shook his head. “I don’t think I should. You don’t understand.”

Heather looked at Kieran. She moved to the opening and, for the first time, she noticed how wide the floor was. She saw the upended boxes, noticing the crimson trail that Abel had left behind. The room remained silent.

“What do you mean?” Kieran asked. “Do you know where you are, Abel?” Heather shrugged at Kieran, then he turned his attention back to the older man.

“They did things to me. Horrible things. They took my eyes. . . ” Abel lowered his head. “They took my brother. They stuck needles into me, hundreds of needles.
Those bastards!
”

Kieran gulped. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to ask the next question.

“Who did this to you? Who are they?”

Abel swallowed. “I don’t know who they are. But they aren’t exactly a friendly bunch of guys. They ripped my eyes out. I couldn’t even feel the pain at first, because they’d drugged me. I just remember being able to see, and then waking up and everything I know was darkness. Becoming blind in an instant. I thought you were them. I thank the Lord that you're not.”

Kieran flinched. “Why did you think we were them?”

Abel stood up. “Well, I suppose because they followed me. I heard them not half an hour ago. One of them whispered in my ear. They said: ‘your brother will never forgive you for this’.”

Kieran and Heather looked at one another.

“I am afraid I was followed and I have put you both in terrible danger. I do apologise.”

***

Delta hadn’t expected this turn of events. When Abel had turned up, it'd caught him by surprise. Up until this point, Delta had been controlling everything that happened in The Game, at least from his own point of view. He knew that somewhere, he'd organised a troop of the clones to be made. These were to be used to keep his Choices occupied for several minutes whilst he put the next piece of his plan into action. He'd selected five random people from the available database based on merit, picking two brothers, Abel and Adam. They were the finest genetic scientists in their field.

James, Luke and Matthew were next. Their connection was that they were all in their physical prime. All of them were professional English football players. Their calibre of physical fitness had meant he had been forced to fork out nearly a million pounds to secure them. But he knew it was worth it.

Geneticists and footballers. Perfect fodder.

When creating clones, Delta knew that the fitter the human original was, the more successful their DNA for recreating them as super soldiers. Athletes, soldiers or indeed anyone who had a faultless physical form, was a near-perfect clone candidate. Brains also worked, and combining both fitness and intelligence was the best way to create
the
perfect clone.

The only flaw being that they could think for themselves.

From looking at his screen, it appeared that Abel had either escaped or the drugs had worn off. Until he contacted his Interjection Team, he wouldn’t know which it was. Maybe Abel’s age was responsible for what had happened.

Delta was angry, but he could still turn the situation around. He was still leading The Game.

He tapped his keyboard. The cameras changed. He could see Abel with the Choices. They were nurturing him like a couple of pansy pricks.
Suckers.

Delta dialled a number on his phone: he needed to speak with his Interjection Team. And fast.

The phone rang on and on, but there was no answer.

He tapped his keyboard again, and studied the images on his screen carefully. He noticed marks on the floor: Abel was leaving a trail of blood. Was he injured? He observed the images closely. Even from this distance, Delta could see the blood smeared all over the man.

Some years ago, Delta had synthesised a drug that facilitated the cloning process. Cloning was no longer a new topic in science. Still controversial, of course, but not new. Delta had developed a medication that not only enabled the cloning to be a lot simpler, but also served to enhance the clones: it gave them a physical edge over their human counterparts.

For years, the remuneration from various military contracts had been his bread and butter. Delta was a proud scientist and this was his greatest achievement. Governments had been paying for his services for a decade now. It was completely hush, hush of course, no one outside their own tight circle knew what was happening, and everything was cloaked in red tape and secrecy. And people thought Area 51 was for aliens. They were wrong.

But not far off the truth. The clones were something much more special than aliens. Clones were the future of the world. The knowledge of such a topic could sow absolute havoc everywhere and ultimately destroy everything. Delta smiled.

He decided to let this situation play itself out. He sat back in his chair and sipped his drink.

On the monitor to his left, just out of his vision, he failed to notice his Interjection Team signalling to the camera for help. In the background, a bald figure was attacking them. Then the camera went dead.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Kathryn hadn’t spoken for several minutes. The seriousness of her situation was running through her mind, rewinding and then running all over again repeatedly.

She couldn’t accept that this whole setup was a game. This sort of thing just didn’t happen in normal life. Such scenarios were played out in movies where studios provided big budgets and employed well-known actors to make profits at the box office. People didn’t go to all this expense and effort just for fun. There wasn’t enough personal cashflow in the world to permit something like this. It just wasn’t feasible to create replicas of buildings and entire streets overnight. You would need planning permission and contracts and workers and health and safety restrictions. Kathryn hadn’t been unconscious for more than two days.

What was happening was impossible.

Unless all these preparations had been done in advance. Like Iain had mentioned, the players of The Game do it every five years. Five years was enough time to build anything, given a suitable workforce and materials. More than enough time for someone to set up a situation like this. Five years was enough to stalk you, build up a profile, learn your habits, establish your regular haunts and favourite shops. Given the correct funding, someone could easily replicate someone’s life in that time. It would be a massive invasion of privacy, but in this day and age, it would hardly be a shock. And Iain had said that she was on his radar all those years ago. Anything was possible.

Kathryn felt sick, nausea overtaking her. She leaned against the wall. Once she regained her balance, she felt better. The thought of her being watched constantly over the past few years made her angry. She vowed to make the person responsible for this pay. She looked at Iain, realising that he would have some idea of how to find the players of The Game. Iain was still sitting on his desk, watching her. He stood up.

“We need to go, Kathryn, we can’t stay here. It isn’t safe.”

Kathryn stepped into Iain’s path, blocking him. “I need some answers. If you want me to help you, I want some fucking answers.”

Iain sighed. “I can give them to you while we move.”

Kathryn stood firm. “No,
now!
I just found out that my life is a fucking horror show and you expect me to calmly accept it? No way.”

Iain grimaced. “This is a mistake, Kathryn.” He paused; “Okay, fine, but not here.” He grabbed Kathryn’s arm and pulled her back towards an open door. Iain pushed her through the opening, and she found herself in a dark office with one solitary window. He followed her inside and closed the door. Through the window, the isolated street outside looked peaceful and quaint, completely unaffected by the incidents of the evening.

The room was in darkness and she could only make out dark shapes. Even so, Kathryn recognised the room from memory: this was one of the meeting rooms that they used for training. The shapes were a desk and multiple chairs and she knew a projector was present somewhere too. She sat in one of the chairs. Iain stood guard at the entrance. He took a breath before saying, “So, what do you want to know?”

Kathryn relaxed. “Well, first of all, why are you here? You say that you played this game in the past and decided to come back. Didn’t you say that you were punished if you lose?”

Iain nodded. “Yes, that is true. I was runner-up when I played. I made a deal with The Company – those are the guys who run the whole thing. I agreed to play the game on the next showing if they allowed me to live a normal five years beforehand. They were happy for that arrangement. I'm the first Chronicle who has ever played the game and then participated, let alone volunteered. For them, it was big money. For me, it meant I could live a normal five years with my wife. I accepted my fate, but it meant I could do it on my terms. Some of the shit The Company does is pure evil. I didn’t want them having that control over me. To be honest, I had an agenda for doing it this way. Turns out it didn’t matter anyway.”

Iain turned away. Kathryn looked at him, puzzled. Iain pulled the door ajar and kept a vigil on the rooms beyond. He was expecting trouble, which worried Kathryn. Surely they would have been safer on the move than cooped up in here, she reasoned.

You wanted to stop.

She realised that the dangerous situation she’d found herself in was her own fault. She moved towards him. Iain held up his hand, signalling for her not to come any closer. Kathryn saw movement beyond the door. She crept nearer to him.

“Who is it?”

“Not sure, I think it’s Sputnik…”

Kathryn stifled a laugh. “Sputnik, tell me you’re kidding, right? That’s the guy’s
real
name?”

“No, it’s an alias. These guys all have aliases, specifically for The Game. It keeps them from being identified. To be honest, a lot of people in here don’t have a life outside of it. The Company likes to keep a low profile with everything. Should footage of what’s going on get leaked to the outside, they need to eliminate all trails that lead back to them. By hiring nobodies and criminals and funding their habits they have a workforce that’s easy to control. No one fucks with The Company, especially if they keep you sustained with booze, drugs and women. Regardless, Sputnik is in the building…we need to avoid him at all costs.”

Kathryn looked at Iain. When she'd first met him, he'd been calm and collected. Now, for the first time, she could see that he was petrified. “It’s another story entirely being on this end of the chaos, isn’t it, Iain?”

Iain smiled. “You aren’t wrong. When I played The Game, I felt empowered and alive. It was the biggest rush I’ve ever felt. Having that power at your fingertips was really something else. Being on the receiving end only makes me realise what a fool I was to get involved in the first place. The Game was the biggest mistake of my life.”

“Why? You said you enjoyed being involved?”

Iain wiped a tear from his eye. “When I finished, after three weeks, I went home. The fourth rule of The Game is that you can’t have any contact with the outside world. You have to be one hundred percent committed to the cause. And I was, right up to the last minute. For three weeks, I left my mobile phone in a locker. No calls, no texts. My wife was aware of this, so we agreed it was to be done. After all, if I won, we would be rich beyond our wildest dreams. She thought I was on an overseas business trip. Turns out that it didn’t happen that way. As I mentioned, I planned accordingly. Anyway, when I got home, my wife was . . .” He paused for a moment, deeply upset. “She had taken an overdose. She called me, but of course I didn’t pick up the phone. I found her cold body on the kitchen floor, the phone in her hand. The last dialled number was that of my mobile. She had called me out of desperation. You see, my wife was suffering from severe depression and because I wasn’t there she, well. . .”

Kathryn sat there, stunned. Iain turned towards her. “You see? If it hadn’t been for this fucking game I would still have my Jeanette with me. We would have been happy for five solid years before I had to come in here. I know The Game, I know the nooks and crannies and intricacies – for instance, I know how to get out of here. I was going to play the wild card, so I could be used at random by a Chronicle. Depending on how they wanted to play The Game. . . . well, I would be put in either to help or hinder. And here I am, The Company got what they wanted.”

Tears flowed down his cheeks. Iain sniffled. “Five long, agonising, lonely years and here I fucking am. I have money. I could have bought a new identity and gone on the run, but no, here I fucking am. Fulfilling my prophecy – to help or hinder.” Iain wiped tears from his cheek.

Kathryn backed away. As she considered the implications of what he was saying, she became concerned for her safety. “Iain. Help or hinder. Which one are you? If you tell me hinder then you had better have a good fucking explanation for it.”

Iain turned. His eyes were wet with tears. He wiped them on the back of his hand and stood up. He sniffed. Kathryn backed away, but Iain approached her. “I'm here to help you, Kathryn,” he reassured her. “Turns out that your Chronicle, wise as he is, had a system malfunction and ordered an ‘all in’ on you – something that has never been done before. According to The Game handbook, it’s a cowardly move, an act of weakness. As I say, when he put the ‘all in’ plan into action, I was brought in to help you out. So don’t worry, you have nothing to fear.”

“What’s an ‘all in’?”

“The Game is played in phases. For you, Phase One was the psychos outside. Phase Two was running into them in the building. Phase Three hasn’t happened yet and Phase Four comes later. Now, your Chronicle ordered Three and Four at the
same
time
. As I said, it’s a cowardly move. It shows the other Chronicles that he is either desperate or crazy. In the rules, either of these extremes is forbidden in a player – well, at least, it’s not recommended. Either way, it’s bad."

Kathryn nodded slowly. Iain continued.

"So The Company have a failsafe built into The Game. Obviously the last thing they need is a ‘Choice’ – that means you – dying too quickly. They make no money from the sponsors and it’s not good for their reputation. So they insert the failsafe – that’s me – to even things out. Luckily I was due to take part in The Game anyway, in fact, originally I was supposed to hinder you: hence the guns. Now, I'm your saving grace; which for me isn’t that great. However, The Company tell me what to do and I have to do it. Once The Game is over, I can leave.”

Kathryn was surprised. She sat in silence for a moment. Iain was sacrificing a lot to help her, she realised. In the first scenario he could simply have turned up, shot someone, and gone home happy. However, because of his wife’s death, Kathryn suspected he wasn’t quite as compliant towards his employers as he made out. “You’re going to stiff The Company, aren’t you?” she asked. “They took your wife from you, so you are going to expose The Game? Either that or. . .”

Kathryn moved to the door, stepping in front of Iain. “I want in,” she told him firmly. “Whatever your plan is to bring these fuckers down, I want in. Not because I'm pissed at them, or because what they're doing is some crazy shit. I want to do it for Jeanette. I want to help you. You don’t deserve to be back in here after the loss they caused you. It’s some twisted shit, and I know that you are scared to defy them, since they’re so powerful. But if all that’s happened to me becomes public knowledge then The Company are finished. Let me help you take them down.”

Iain smiled at her. “I appreciate the suggestion. However, I can’t expect you to help me. You have a life outside of this place and I can’t take that away from you.”

“Iain, you’ve already endangered your life by helping me. The least I can do is return the favour.”

He stared at Kathryn. For a while his face remained stonily unresponsive. Then gradually his expression softened. Iain realised that for the first time in a long while he was feeling happy and somehow relieved. He squeezed Kathryn’s arm gently.

“Fine,” he thanked her. “But you follow my orders. You can’t help me if you’re dead.”

Iain stood up and opened the door - just as a bullet shattered the glass and blew the door backwards. It knocked Kathryn over as Iain collapsed to the ground beside her. The bullet appeared to have buried itself into the wall behind them. Kathryn looked at Iain. “Are you hit?”

“No, it went past me. Trouble is, it means that they know we're here.”

“Woooooo…looks like we got us a couple of hornpigs here, fellas!!!!”

The voice that boomed out had a trace of a Russian accent, Kathryn thought, but on the whole, Sputnik’s speech sounded British.

Iain crawled behind the door and peered out. Sputnik and Genghis were standing in the office, about thirty feet apart. Boyd walked into view and joined them. There was no sign of the fourth person, Kathryn hoped he wasn’t hiding nearby. Sputnik was armed with one of the guns he’d used earlier on. He held it one-handed, leaning it against his leg. From here, Kathryn could see smoke rising from the barrel. He wore a pair of aviator glasses that concealed his one good eye, his hair was cropped tight and his muscles rippled. Genghis stood still, arms crossed. Boyd was bouncing up and down. He was nursing his chin. Kathryn smiled, remembering their earlier battle.

“
Little pigs, little pigs, let me come in!
Boyd, why won’t the fucking pigs answer? Did we turn them into bacon yet?”

Boyd smiled. “Fuck, no. I reckon that bitch is sucking him off rotten.”

Sputnik slapped Boyd across the face. “Language in the presence of a whore…
Ha
.”

Boyd smiled, blood oozing from his nose. He rubbed his face and laughed. “Bitch ought to be suckin’ me cock after the hurtin’ she gave me earlier.” Boyd continued rubbing his jaw.

Iain looked back at Kathryn, beckoning her close. “This could get messy. I’m going to see if I can take out Genghis. If I miss, be ready to run. There’s a door behind you that leads to the next room. We can go through there and gain some distance. It leads around the other side of the stairs. We can get to the emergency exit that way.”

“I'll huff….And I'll puff….And I'll blow your house in!”

More bullets whizzed through the window. They peppered the wall behind Kathryn, missing their targets. Plaster and wallpaper dropped on their heads.